~ This is all me, laid bare. Journeys of the inner road, stumbling, falling, and getting up again and again. Live, laugh, cry, hurt, be unabashedly human. You're already beautiful.

Most direct way to understand “Gentle with yourself”

I was out on my run tonight and out of nowhere the realizations hit me. Many of us hear “Be gentle with yourself” and in challenging times some of us remember to tell ourselves that. The thing is, that phrase have become one of those in-one-out-the-other notions. Most people haven’t understood the real power of it.

To give you the most direct way to live in that during your most challenging moments, ‘Be gentle with myself’ basically translates to: Giving that love you’d shower upon your partner to yourself, and really feeling it, as if there’s a bigger version of you giving it to this body-you.

I realized that is the easiest way everyone can comprehend because even with people who don’t have a partner at this moment, we all already have the notion/imagination/envision/knowing of how much love, care, nurturing and gentleness we’d give to our partner. Take this moment now to realize that if you just ask, most people would acknowledge that at any given moment they’d shower all the love in the world to their partner or someone they adore-yet little will readily tell you that they’ll do the same to themselves in a very real emotional sense. Have you ever wondered why is that? We’re so ready to love others yet we can be the most critical to ourselves.

So huge reminder to ourselves, be gentle with ourselves. Treat ourselves gently, carry ourselves gently, walk gently, eat gently, speak gently. And the way to do that? Give all that love you’d give to someone you love, to yourself, in a very literal emotional sense. See a bigger you within giving to this body-you. You are loved.